The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In plant breeding and selection processes, genotypic and/or phenotypic data can be gathered from inoculated plants to determine whether particular plants are resistant or susceptible to one or more particular pathogens, such as viral, bacterial or fungal pathogens. Additionally, such genotypic and/or phenotypic data can be gathered from inoculated plants to screen and select plants that possess a particular genetic trait that are resistant to one or more pathogens, and/or to classify a level of susceptibility or resistance of particular plants to one or more pathogens.
Plant inoculation is a tedious process that is typically hand performed by manually injecting plants with the pathogen, manually spraying the pathogen on plants, or manual applying liquid pathogen to a manually abraded leaf. Such hand performed inoculation methods are typically ergonomically unfriendly, the inoculation throughput rate is very low and the accuracy, in terms of consistency of inoculation, is typically sporadic.